Benefits Paid by Type of Beneficiary

Number of Social Security Beneficiaries

The graph below shows the number of people receiving Social Security
benefits at the end of calendar quarters, beginning with data for March 1970.

Beneficiaries receiving benefitsat the end of September 2017

All beneficiaries

61,642,036

Retired workers and dependents

45,218,432

Survivors

5,973,265

Disabled workers and dependents

10,450,339

Counting dual-entitled beneficiaries
If a beneficiary is entitled to both a primary benefit (as a retired
or disabled worker) and another benefit (say a spousal benefit)
payable from the same trust fund, then he or she is counted only once
in our statistics as a primary beneficiary.